Features of fully integrated renewable energy atlas for Pakistan; wind, solar and cooling

A fully integrated renewable energy atlas is presented which provides the wind and solar photo-voltaic (PV) power generation potential as well as cooling demand for Pakistan at a temporal resolution of 1-hr and spatial resolution of 14 x 14 km2. The proposed atlas uses weather based modelling for calculating renewable power generation time-series and the power-demand modelling is performed using real hourly electrical-load demand, conventional power generation and power consumption data for the year 2016. It has been found that Pakistan has much higher potential for the wind power generation than solar (PV) power generation and very good potential for the concentrated solar power. Furthermore, the optimum wind/solar power mix suggests that 95% of wind power generation and 5% of solar (PV) power generation leads to the least amount of power-shortfall. It is envisioned that the integration of renewable energy with cooling sector can be instrumental in overcoming Pakistan's electrical power-crisis. The current power-shortfall of 38.36 TW h can be resolved by installing rated wind and solar (PV) power generation capacity of 10.4 GW and 882 MW, respectively.